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Due to the continuing low interest rate environment as well as the increase in acquisition costs, price transparency, cost transparency and competition with banks, the cost of life insurance becomes increasingly important for customers, insurers and shareholders. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to study the development of insurers’ economies of scale in regard to administrative costs for four of the largest European life insurance markets.

The analysis on economies of scale is based on a comprehensive set of 477 life insurers in Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, yearly data between 2000 and 2014, and regression calculations that are based on 4,855 observations.

The results show that economies of scale exist for all considered markets and for most of the considered years. However, the extent of economies of scale varies considerably across countries.

Overall, the existing academic literature on costs and corresponding economies of scale in life insurance primarily deals with analyses of total costs instead of administrative costs, a single year or a single market. This paper contributes to the existing literature by conducting an analysis of recent market dynamics and economies of scale in regard to administrative costs for the period from 2000 and 2014 for four of the largest European life insurance markets for which the respective data were available (Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK) and 477 life insurers in total. This is done by means of a log-log transformation of premiums and costs and a fixed effects model based on these transformed figures for 4,855 observations. In addition, for each market, the authors analyze the development of administrative costs for a total of 477 insurers.

Cost behaviour literature is expanding its reach beyond developed economies; however, there is limited knowledge about its causes in emerging economies. This is an exploratory study of sticky costs behaviour determinants in Argentina, a country with periodic political and economic turbulence. The purpose of this paper is to test the effect of GDP, asset intensity, industry and cost type in an inflationary context.

Anderson et al. (2003) empirical regression (ABJ model) is replicated in Argentina with 667 observations from 96 firms between the years 2004 and 2012. It uses panel data and variables are defined as change rates between two periods. The sample excludes financial and insurance firms. It tests if sticky cost behaviour changes in periods of macroeconomic deceleration, or in firms belonging to industries with different asset intensity levels, or among different cost types.

The analysis shows that costs are sticky in Argentina, where a superb economic outlook is required to delay cutting resources or increasing costs. Cost behaviour is affected by social and cultural factors, such as labour inflexibility driven by powerful unions and not by protective employment laws, asset intensity (industry) and macroeconomic environment. Results suggest that costs are sticky for aggregate samples, but not for all subsamples.

Administrative costs are sticky when GDP grows; but when growth declines, managers or firms do not delay cost cutting actions. Some subsamples are extreme cases of stickiness while others are anti-sticky, casting some doubt on the usefulness of sticky costs empirical tests applied to country-wide samples. Careful selection of observations for sticky costs studies in emerging economies is critical.

Evidence from previous studies show that on average costs are remarkably sticky in Argentina; this study shows that cost reduction activities occur faster but are not persistent enough to change the aggregated long-term results of cost stickiness in the presence of moderate to high inflation. The study contributes to the literature by suggesting that observations used in sticky costs studies from emerging economies might be mainly from positive macroeconomic environments, might have skewed results due to extreme cases of stickiness or might be distorted by inflation.

This paper addresses the question as to what extent the outsourcing degrees of property management influence the operating costs of owner‐operated real estate. For this purpose, the outsourcing degrees of technical, infrastructural and commercial property management of over 100 Swiss office buildings were reviewed. In terms of costs, the administrative costs as well as the costs of utilities, waste disposal, cleaning, upkeep and maintenance were included. As the analysis of the data revealed, commercial property management primarily impacts on the administrative costs. The office buildings of the four project partners that were examined incurred higher costs when commercial property management was outsourced. Similarly, the costs of utilities and waste disposal are higher for real estate with outsourced infrastructural property management. An inverse relationship was identified in respect of the cleaning costs, where the costs are lower when outsourcing infrastructural property management. The impact of technical property management becomes apparent with regard to the maintenance costs, which are lower for real estate with outsourced technical property management. On balance, the situation appears to be rather heterogeneous, as outsourcing results in higher costs for some cost groups and in lower costs for others. The reasons offered for these differences go far beyond the actual functions being outsourced. For instance, the project partners involved believe that it is, in particular, low service levels and reduced maintenance strategies that go hand in hand with high degrees of outsourcing. Therefore, the interviews with real estate owners, and also the data collected, give rise to the assumption that outsourcing is a measure for the implementation of cost reduction strategies. However, this assumption requires verification by way of further exploration.

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).

The purpose of this paper is to explore the asymmetric cost behaviour in Greek local governments. More precisely, it investigates whether municipality costs show stickiness or anti-stickiness behaviour after increases or decreases in the stream of their revenues.

The Anderson et al.’s (2003) approach is adapted to the public sector environment by using types of expenses and revenues typical to the local government setting. The data sample consists of 1,852 observations of Greek municipalities for the period 2002-2008.

The empirical evidence suggests that local government managers adjust resources related to administrative services faster when revenues decrease than when they rise (anti-stickiness cost behaviour). On the contrary, they adjust costs of service provision which are associated with core activities asymmetrically; more quickly for upward than for downward activity changes (cost stickiness behaviour).

While prior studies examine the sticky cost phenomenon in the private sector, this study explores this phenomenon in the public sector through a data sample of municipalities. Local governments constitute an appealing and unique setting for the examination of asymmetric cost behaviour due to the existence of a strong political influence, which appears to affect rational economic decision making, and their non-profit character, which prevents them from acting in a business-like manner.

Understanding how cost stickiness works inside local understanding how cost stickiness works inside local governments, could lead to an understanding of its implications in periods of cutback measures. Decreases in municipalities’ subsidies and grants as a result of cutbacks in central government expenditures should not be expected to automatically result in symmetric savings in expenditures as corresponding increases in expenditures when revenues used to grow. At the same time, it might be difficult to achieve balanced budgets in municipalities when there is a considerable decrease in revenues, without having to make considerable adjustments to the input values, the output and the mix of services offered by them.

This study contributes to the accounting literature by expanding the understanding of how deliberate decisions influence the asymmetric cost behaviour in local governments, to different cost categories (administrative expenses and cost of service provision) and different revenue categories (grants, tax revenues and revenues from sales of goods and services).

Hospital costs in the USA are a large part of the national GDP. Medical billing and supplies processes are significant and growing contributors to hospital operations costs in the USA. This article aims to identify cost drivers associated with these processes and to suggest improvements to reduce hospital costs.

A Monte Carlo simulation model that uses @Risk software facilitates cost analysis and captures variability associated with the medical billing process (administrative) and medical supplies process (variable). The model produces estimated savings for implementing new processes.

Significant waste exists across the entire medical supply process that needs to be eliminated. Annual savings, by implementing the improved process, have the potential to save several billion dollars annually in US hospitals. The other analysis in this study is related to hospital billing processes. Increased spending on hospital billing processes is not entirely due to hospital inefficiency.

The study lacks concrete data for accurately measuring cost savings, but there is obviously room for improvement in the two US healthcare processes. This article only looks at two specific costs associated with medical supply and medical billing processes, respectively.

This study facilitates awareness of escalating US hospital expenditures. Cost categories, namely, fixed, variable and administrative, are presented to identify the greatest areas for improvement.

The study will be valuable to US Congress policy makers and US healthcare industry decision makers. Medical billing process, part of a hospital's administrative costs, and hospital supplies management processes are part of variable costs. These are the two major cost drivers of US hospitals' expenditures that were examined and analyzed.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the relationship between organizational capital and the subsets of organizational capital (intellectual capital (IC)) cost and cost stickiness.

This study is causal correlational research. The data related to the company’s financial statements were collected using the Rahavard Novin Software and www.rdis.ir. In this study, panel data were run with the use of Eviews 8, in order to test the hypotheses. The ordinary least-squares method is used in this study to estimate the parameters of the model.

The results obtained from the study show that there is a significant relationship between organizational capital and cost stickiness. However, there is no significant difference between high and low rank in terms of organizational capital and cost stickiness. In addition, there is a significant difference between IC and cost stickiness. Moreover, there is no significant difference between the components of IC and cost stickiness. Also, IC has an effect on the intensity of the relationship between organizational capital and cost stickiness.

This study explores the relationship between organizational capital and the subsets of IC and cost stickiness. Independent variables used in this study include organizational capital, IC and its components in the Pulic model, i.e. the efficiency of capital employed, the efficiency of human capital and the efficiency of structural capital.

This paper aims to measure the cost of procurement because public procurement procedures prescribed by legislation not only enhance transparency and competition but also entail certain transaction costs for both customers and suppliers.

These costs are important to the efficiency of the procurement system. However, very few previous studies have focused on estimating procurement costs. This paper proposes a methodology for public procurement cost evaluation.

This paper shows how procurement costs can be calculated using a formalized survey of public customers. This methodology was tested with a representative group of public customers operating in one region of the Russian Federation.

The authors formulate the policy implications of this paper, as they relate to the improvement of public procurement regulations and argue that this methodological approach can be applied in other developing and transitioning economies.

This paper provides a review and synthesis of past research regarding financial disclosure management by nongovernmental nonprofit organizations and suggests directions for future study. The primary purpose of this review is to summarize the evidence on financial disclosure management to help regulators and other stakeholders understand why, how, and to what extent nonprofits engage in this behavior. The paper begins by defining disclosure management in nonprofit organizations and exploring the motivations for why it might occur. Next is a survey of the nongovernmental nonprofit financial reporting environment: objectives, common practices, and the informational needs of users of nonprofit financial reports. Research exploring the motives, methods, and consequences of disclosure management is summarized. The evidence suggests that nongovernmental nonprofit managers have a variety of incentives to manage reported numbers and that they do in fact alter spending decisions, choose accounting methods, and design cost allocations to achieve certain performance benchmarks. Furthermore, this review sheds light on the consequences of disclosure management and what can or should be done to limit it.